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In Oblivion, you start off in a dungeon in the imperial palace. You're never told what crime you committed, I guess you're supposed to fill in that blank for yourself so I chose to believe I was in there for shagging the emperors wife and daughter at the same time while playing a rock guitar solo on the desecrated corpse of God. — Zero Punctuation review of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
This is kind of like You All Meet In An Inn, except instead of the players beginning in a inn, they start off in some form of captivity for no apparent reason. The characters must then escape imprisonment, and find out why.
The theme in RPGs and writing is that imprisonment is instant motivation ("get out of here"), and that they can work out the details of why later. It also gives reason why people who wouldn't normally like each other are pulling together. Similar to a Closed Circle, and a common way to Gather Characters.
Can lead to Boxed Crook or Condemned Contestant. In Tabletop Games, You All Meet In A Cell usually goes poorly, as the characters have no reason to stick together once they escape their confinement, and often don't. At least when You All Meet In An Inn, any character who isn't inclined to join up with the group will leave immediately, instead of one or two sessions in.
Examples:
Anime
Film
- The Cube series has a variant, in the form of "You all meet for no known reason in a shifting death trap"
- Down By Law starts with Tom Waits' character being arrested. The other main characters soon end up in the same cell.
- The main characters of O Brother Where Art Thou meet in a chain gang.
- The Usual Suspects has the variant of "You all meet in a police line-up."
- The original The Inglorious Bastards has the heroes meeting as U.S. Army prisoners who escape and try to make their way to Switzerland.
- The Dirty Dozen are all in prison for various crimes, that's why they are picked for the suicide mission, it's their only hope to avoid a long prison term or death sentence. They don't meet there but we meet them there as the commander offers each one the mission.
Literature
- Martin and Gonff meet this way in Brian Jacques' Mossflower.
- Alec and Seregil in Nightrunner.
- Five characters wake up in the title building of William Sleator's House of Stairs, which appears to have no way out.
- The protagonists of Raymond E. Feist's Shadow of a Dark Queen meet just before they're all sent to the gallows.
Live Action TV
- The original cast of Blake's Seven (with one exception, introduced later) were all prisoners on a prison ship.
- Likewise, the main characters of Farscape all meet on a Prison ship. Except they then make off with said prison ship and run around the galaxy. It was also partly based off of Blake's Seven.
Tabletop RPGs
- Advanced Dungeons And Dragons module A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords, which starts out in, well, Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Somewhat justified in that the previous module ended with the PC party being captured by the Slave Lords.
- In Finder's Bane Joel and Holly who already knew each other met Walinda and Jasmine after being captured by clergy of Iyachtu Xvim and had to escape together.
- Deadlands example: In the Devil's Canyon adventure, the posse wakes up alone in a cabin in the back country, with no memory of how they got there. Doesn't seem like much of an example, until most of the way through the adventure. Turns out they're all dead. Their "dark half" was in control when they were captured, explaining the amnesia...and how this example fits being held against your will.
- This works great for Evil aligned adventuring parties, who may well be in the cell for a good reason...
WebComic
Video Games
- 1213, a freeware platformer by Zero Punctuation creator Ben Croshaw, opens with an amnesiac character being allowed to escape his cell.
- Arx Fatalis starts the player off in a cell in a goblin fortress with no knowledge of who you are or why you're there.
- In Baldurs Gate 2, finding out why you were imprisoned and experimented upon by the Big Bad is actually a major part of the plot.
- Most The Elder Scrolls games start off with this. As the protagonist is always an AFGNCAAP (or rather Choose Your Own Age, Face, Gender, etc) whose actions and personality are entirely up to you and with the Elder Scroll games being so open-ended, your character's origins have to be open-ended, too. Your character might be a thieving murdering bastard who got caught, or they might be a paragon of righteousness who was wrongfully imprisoned, or they might not even know themselves.
- In The Elder Scrolls Arena, your character is in prison because you had incurred the displeasure of the Big Bad.
- In The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall, your character suffered a shipwreck and found him/herself washed up in a cave that connected to a dungeon. Not technically a prisoner, but it amounts to the same thing.
- In The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind you start as a prisoner aboard an imperial ship, you are about to be released. The first spoken words in the game are the daedra Azura speaking to you in a dream, saying: "They have taken you from the Imperial City's prison".
- In The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, you're just someone who apparently nobody recognizes in a prison cell for no reason ever revealed. It's implied you were teleported there by a god.
- Escape from Monkey Island began with Guybrush tied up tho the mastil of his own ship, while Elaine and the others repelled a pirate attack.
- Escaping the previous idea of striking out from your Doomed Hometown, Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3 was going to start out with you held in a prison cell.
- Instead, in Bethesda's Fallout 3, you start out in a vault where no one ever enters and no one ever leaves. Like a big city prison.
- City Of Villains starts with the player's character being freed from a Cardboard Prison by a Big Bad's Faceless Goons.
- Portal similarly opens with the PC being awakened from an Aperture Science Relaxation Vault.
- Rayman 2: The Great Escape begins with Globox freeing Rayman from a prison cell.
- Seiken Densetsu 3. You get your final party member while in a cell unless you chose Carlie to be third. Different in that you've already played long enough to beat the first boss before you end up in a cell.
- This is taken a step further EARLIER at Castle City Jad, as EVERY PLAYABLE CHARACTER except Carlie appears in that town for their own reasons just in time for the beastmen to put the whole city on lockdown.
- Unreal (the original single-player version) begins with the player's character regaining consciousness after the ship, which was transporting him/her to a prison planet, crashes on Na Pali, killing (almost) every other passenger and conveniently enabling the player's escape.
- Exile/Avernum begins with the group being thrown into a gigantic underground prison complex together. In later games, the group apparently got together deliberately.
- In the second game, the P Cs are part of the Avernite armed forces - whether they banded up themselves, or were assigned to each other by the military is left to imagination. In the third game, the situation is similar - only this time, they're the back-up surface explorers acting on behalf of the Avernite government.
- Legerdemain
 . You start the game in "The Jails of the Doobah Boogadah II", and the beginning of the game involves breaking out.
- In Sa Ga Frontier, Emelia begins her story in Vault, a supermax prison, wrongfully accused of her fiance's murder. She breaks out accompanied by Anne and Lisa. (Ironically, in anyone else's story, Anne would help you break into Vault during the Rune Quest.)
- Early on in Tales Of Vesperia the main character, Yuri, is placed in the Imperial City's prison. The person in the cell next to him is a man named Raven, later revealed to be Schwann, a captain of the Imperial Knights. He helps Yuri escape, and several hours of gameplay later he becomes your last party member.
- Riven's gameplay begins with the player witnessing a struggle from withing a prison cell, after which the cell is opened.
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